f a
pen that had been used once for chickens or swine. Mr. Trimm tried the
wire with his fingers. It was firm and springy. Rocking and groaning
with the pain of it, he nevertheless began sliding the chain back and
forth, back and forth along the strand of wire.

Eventually the wire, weakened by age, snapped in two. A tiny shined
spot, hardly deep enough to be called a nick, in its tarnished, smudged
surface was all the mark that the chain showed.

Staggering a little and putting his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm left
the clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from the
railroad. After a mile or two he came to a dusty wood road winding
downhill.

To the north of the clearing where Mr. Trimm had halted were a farm and
a group of farm buildings. To the southward a mile or so was a cluster
of dwellings set in the midst of more farm lands, with a shop or two and
a small white church with a green spire in the center. Along a road that
ran northward from the hamlet to the solitary farm a ten-year-old boy
came, carrying a covered tin pail. A young gray squirrel flirted across
the wagon ruts ahead of him and darted up a chestnut sapling. The boy
put the pail down at the side of the road and began looking for a stone
to throw at the squirrel.

Mr. Trimm slid out from behind a tree. A hemstitched handkerchief,
grimed and stained, was loosely twisted around his wrists, partly hiding
the handcuffs. He moved along with a queer, sliding gait, keeping as
much of his body as he could turned from the youngster. The ears of the
little chap caught the faint scuffle of feet and he spun around on his
bare heel.

"My boy, would you----" Mr. Trimm began.

The boy's round eyes widened at the apparition that was sidling toward
him in so strange a fashion, and then, taking fright, he dodged past Mr.
Trimm and ran back the way he had come, as fast as his slim brown legs
could take him. In half a minute he was out of sight round a bend.

Had the boy looked back he would have seen a still more curious
spectacle than the one that had frightened him. He would have seen a man
worth four million dollars down on his knees in the yellow dust, pawing
with chained hands at the tight-fitting lid of the tin pail, and then,
when he had got the lid off, drinking the fresh, warm milk which the
pail held with great, choking gulps, uttering little mewing, animal
sounds as he drank, while the white, creamy milk ran over his chin and
spl